Analysis: Events outside Kansas cloud Roberts-Wolf race

Questions raised about anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment

Milton Wolf, who is challenging Sen. Pat Roberts' U.S. Senate seat, said the end of the era of career politicians is ending following U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's loss in the Virginia Republican primary last week.

Even with tea party challenger Milton Wolf’s feisty rhetoric and daily attacks, many Kansas Republicans see U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts coasting to a comfortable victory in the state’s Aug. 5 Republican primary.

But U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning loss to an underfinanced and largely unknown primary challenger in his Virginia congressional district this past week raised new questions about the certainty of a Roberts primary victory and how much an anti-Washington, anti-incumbent sentiment on the right could hurt him.

The three-term Republican incumbent’s supporters contend there are significant differences between Roberts and Cantor, particularly the Kansan’s tougher stance against creating a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Still, Wolf’s backers are buoyed by the results in Virginia and believe Kansas is part of a larger political trend.

“One of the hardest things for an underdog to do is convince voters, donors and campaign workers that you can win,” said Bob Beatty, a political science professor at Washburn University. “It looks a little more possible after Cantor.”

Wolf, a Leawood radiologist, has been campaigning aggressively against Roberts since October and portraying the incumbent as a career politician who has lost touch with Kansas.

Roberts’ career in Washington dates back to his days as a congressional aide in the late 1960s, and Wolf attacks Roberts daily for owning a home in a Washington suburb in Virginia while listing rented space in the home of Dodge City supporters as his Kansas residence.

For weeks, Wolf has suggested Roberts is struggling like another veteran Republican incumbent with a strong tea party challenger — Mississippi’s Thad Cochran, who finished second in a three-person primary earlier this month and is now in a tough runoff.

“Something very real is going on,” Wolf said in an interview last week. “This era of the career politician is ending, which I think is a very good thing for America.”

However, such assessments from Wolf and his supporters seemed less compelling before Cantor’s loss.

Roberts has spent nearly $1.1 million on his campaign since the start of last year — more than three times as much as Wolf — and the incumbent had $2.25 million in campaign cash at the end of March, compared to Wolf’s $278,000. Roberts also has the backing of the Kansas State Rifle Association and the anti-abortion group Kansans for Life, both key constituencies within the state GOP.

Wolf also has faced questions about his posting on Facebook several years ago of graphic images from X-rages of gunshot wounds and other medical injuries, though he said they were removed quickly and has apologized publicly.

Roberts also showed his confidence by broadcasting two positive television ads in May, featuring testimonials from Kansas residents without mentioning Wolf. Roberts said last week that he has never taken his race with Wolf for granted — a criticism leveled at Cantor after his loss.

“In the first place, I’m not Cantor,” Roberts said. “This is not going to happen in Kansas.”

Beatty said Wolf also faces the additional challenge of running statewide. In Cantor’s Virginia district, about 65,000 voters cast ballots in the GOP primary. In the last U.S. Senate primary in Kansas, almost 329,000 ballots were cast — meaning Wolf has to reach far more potential voters across a far larger geographical area.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a former Kansas Republican Party chairman backing Roberts, said the senator doesn’t face the same backlash as Cantor did because Roberts has consistently opposed proposals described by critics as “amnesty” for immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Kobach’s support for Roberts is a key signal, given that Kobach, a former law professor, is nationally known for helping write Arizona’s and Alabama’s tough laws against illegal immigration.

“I don’t see this is as just an anti-long-term member of Congress thing,” Kobach said of any potential national trend. “I see this as an issue-driven thing that is specific to each race.”

But Taylor Budowich, executive director of the Tea Party Express, said the key factor for Cantor was losing touch with his district with voters across the nation “ready for some fresh blood.” Also, Budowich said, after Mississippi’s runoff is decided June 24, “The next race in line is Kansas.”

“The ball continues to roll downhill and pick up mass,” he said.

Wolf’s supporters at least have been energized by Cantor’s loss in Virginia, and the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Kansas suddenly seems a lot less sleepy.

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1. Incumbent politicians should be reelected as a matter of political right;
2. Term limits are only for the politicians from the other political party;
3. People who believe that citizens are “Taxed Enough Already” are dangerous to the
political right of incumbency and should be discredited at all cost;
4. That the winner in any political race should only be the candidate that raises the most
money, has the most endorsements and has the most influential friends;
5. Voters should just pay their ever increasing tax bill and let the incumbents continue to govern.

But, Kansas voters are not buying that theory anymore. Time and time again, the voters are realizing that a vote for the establishment incumbent will simply result in a “carbon-copy” of that politician's past performance. It’s a sound theory indeed that past performance is a good predictor of future performance.

U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s stunning loss to a virtual unknown primary challenger has caused the political establishment in Kansas to respond by boldly pronouncing, “This is not going to happen in Kansas”. This reminds me of a passage from the Wizard Oz, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

Well, Kansas voters are paying attention and Wolf’s statement that “This era of the career politician is ending, which I think is a very good thing for America” has the ring of truth to it.

Kansas voters should be suspicious of establishment incumbents telling citizens that they should continue to support career politicians and that it is a “good thing” for Kansas and America to reelect them, and only them, to high political office regardless of their past performance.

This is a self-serving and deceptive statement by the establishment / incumbent politician.
The Kansas voters are watching and will have the final say in the August primaries and November general election. It is my hope that the era of the career politician is indeed over.

Trying to compare Cantor's race and the Kansas Senate race is overlooking one MAJOR distinction. In talking and reading about the Cantor race, it seems apparent that Cantor "forgot" where he was from. he was spending too much time on his leadership duties and not enough time on "retail politics". The same cannot be said about Roberts. Roberts regularly visits the whole state. He's been to my hometown in SW Kansas more in the last couple of years that I have. Roberts is a great Senator and the people of Kansas know that. He will be re-elected..

Should voters be wary of politicians who tell us our tax bills are ever increasing when in fact our federal and state tax bills have pretty consistently gone down, not up, over the last 40 years? That is as a matter of rate, or percent of GDP, or inflation adjusted total dollars, or about any way you want to look at it.

I'm suspicious of politicians who whine about the inefficiencies of government and then lie about the reality of tax revenues. Taxes have gone down, government services may very well have suffered as well but that is the most likely cause, not some vague notion about the inherent incompetence of public workers. I find it remarkably amusing how free marketers have an amazing ability to not be able to see free market principles working when it comes to government services. If a restaurant consistently lost revenue like we have lost tax revenue over the last 40 years, you free marketers would not be surprised at all that they wouldn't be able to attract the quality of servers they used to or that the dishes seemed smaller or of less quality. But that doesn't apply to government, instead you lie about tax history and wonder why things are falling apart? It is disingenuous and dishonest.